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Politics : Don't Blame Me, I Voted For Kerry -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: CalculatedRisk who wrote (27686)	6/2/2004 11:43:39 AM
From: American Spirit	Respond to of 81568

Rightwing calls Gore "Insane" for Fiery Speech: (* Old tactic of the Soviet Union BTW) Al Gore gives a fiery speech and conservatives brand him "insane" -- again. Plus: Coulter defends Rush ... against O'Reilly! - - - - - - - - - - - - By Mark Follman June 2, 2004 \| For a guy most conservatives have crowned the king of boring policy-wonk liberalism, former Vice President Al Gore sure has Bush boosters whipped into a frenzy of late. Last Wednesday he delivered a speech sharply critical of President Bush's Iraq war policy and called for the resignation of its key architects inside the administration. Gore's language was fiery and dramatic, and at 6,000-plus words there was plenty of it. But his essential argument was clear: Bush's foreign policy has imperiled American freedom and security, and fixing the problems wrought by it in Iraq and elsewhere now requires changing the primary players in Washington. Across the board, conservatives deemed Gore's message the treasonous rantings of a mentally ill man. The latest barrage is strikingly similar to a "Gore is nuts" tactic used during the 2000 presidential campaign -- a coordinated assault detailed by ex-right-winger turned media watchdog David Brock in his new book "The Republican Noise Machine: Right-Wing Media and How It Corrupts Democracy." The current roster of high-profile pundits who have mobilized to tear down Gore -- a political figure many of them declare irrelevant but whom they also seem to regard as a serious threat -- is robust enough that you don't so much wonder whether tagging Gore "insane" was a talking point pushed by Bush operatives, as marvel at how quickly they were able to spread the message. By Thursday morning, former Ashcroft Justice Department official and Republican National Committee strategist Barbara Comstock led the charge on National Review Online with a swerving attack so zealous that she could not contain herself to any single theme. In her column titled "Gore's Gone Wild: The Former Veep's Increasingly Bizarre Persona," she ran with the dismissive bit first. "Al Gore is proving to be the most irrelevant, comically absurd former vice president since Spiro Agnew," she scoffed. "This blustering 'Saturday Night Live' caricature is no longer a serious political figure." But in case that didn't do the trick, she also chained Gore to Vermont's most famous governor, and argued that Gore's call for better wartime leadership in Washington amounted to hatred of America as a whole: "In wild-eyed, Howard Dean-like fashion ... [Gore's speech] was an endorsement of a policy of appeasement, retreat, and good old blame-America-first extremism." Later, Comstock veered in another direction, accusing Gore of acting with total contempt for due process. "A former vice president has never engaged in such a simultaneously self-destructive, menacing, and factually questionable speech during war. Gore's speech was both an indictment and a conviction of the entire Bush administration leadership for events at Abu Ghraib. Gore claimed, 'What happened at the prison, it is now clear, was not the result of random acts by "a few bad apples," it was the natural consequence of the Bush Administration policy...' This is not what official investigative findings to date have revealed. Is Gore also indicting our military officials involved in the investigations?" Even if the irony of that assertion is lost on Comstock in the long shadow of Bush war-on-terror legacies like Gitmo and Abu Ghraib, there's always the old stand-by aiding-the-enemy argument, or the sore-loser one. "Outside of MoveOn.org, the biggest cheers for Gore must have been coming from caves in Afghanistan and diehards in Fallujah. Bitterness over Florida and exile from most of the leaders of your own party are no excuses for such irresponsibility." The cavalcade of pundits marching alongside Comstock matched her hyperbole, but seemed to maintain better on-message discipline. Online watchdog Media Matters for America has put together an illuminating survey of the right-wing echo chamber crackling at full volume: "It looks as if Al Gore has gone off his lithium again." -- Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer "Maybe a National Psychological Council would be a good idea after all ... [Gore] ought to seek out for his own good a cool and quiet darkened room." -- National Review contributing editor and former Bush speech writer David Frum "It is now clear that Al Gore is insane. I don't mean that his policy ideas are insane, though many of them are ... there is every reason to believe that Albert Gore Jr., desperately needs help. I think he needs medication, and I think that if he is already on medication, his doctors need to adjust it or change it entirely... Gore's speech is the single craziest political performance of my lifetime ... A man who was very, very nearly president of the United States has been reduced to sounding like one of those people in Times Square with a megaphone screaming about God's justice." -- New York Post columnist John Podhoretz "Somebody needs to check this guy's medication. This guy has got a problem." -- syndicated columnist and retired Marine Lt. Col. Oliver North, on Fox News Channel's "Hannity & Colmes" "He's really nuts." -- Fox News host Sean Hannity, responding to comments by guest Oliver North. "Half the country thinks he's a mental patient ... They think he should go back to the dayroom he came out of." -- radio talk-show host Mark R. Levin, on Fox's "Hannity & Colmes" "At one point I respected Al Gore, but I think he's lost his mind... I think he's gone daft because he's a sad little man now." -- CNBC host Dennis Miller